


Cold Heart Beating

by midnightflame



Series: Homecoming [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), And no it's not the erotic sort, Asphyxiation, Dark Shiro (Voltron), Fear, It doesn't go well for Keith, M/M, Pain, Shiro loses himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:28:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9374444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Not everything lost returns as it was once, a lesson Keith learns the hard way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably be one of the darker entries to this series, so please take heed of any warnings above before proceeding. As before, this is not being written in order, but maybe some more things are apparent with this entry. And as always, I hope you enjoy even with the darker theme here.

When the door to his cell opens, Keith doesn’t know whether he wants to tear the head off of the first sentry he sees, make a mad dash for the opening, or. . .

. . .or. . .

“What did you do to him?!” 

He settles for spontaneity, all instinct sprung, because why bother changing his routine now? Launching himself up from the back left corner of the room, Keith dodges the first soldier, and just as he’s about to take out the second one, he finds himself spinning to catch Shiro as the third soldier drops him with all the lack of ceremony governed by these sorts of exchanges. 

A body worth nothing more than a sack of dirt from a planet better left for dead. 

And Shiro is all dead-weight at this moment, though Keith can feel the breath light against his neck. With his right arm, he cradles Shiro to his chest; his left is held out before him, threatening. Through another line of soldiers, standing just beyond the threshold of his cell, Keith can see Sendak watching him with all the amusement a lion might regard a kitten, puffed up and side-hopping and looking every bit the ruthless killer he imagines himself to be.

It’s absolutely infuriating. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t get too close to him,” Sendak cautions, his voice clear and completely devoid of any honest concern. The left corner of his mouth curls slightly, just enough to light the torch in Keith’s heart, to set fire to his words.

“And just what the hell would you know?!” 

Sendak stands there, his head tipped elegantly to the side. Every bit the precise and practiced soldier. “Far more than you.”

The bars close him in once more, the ever solid distinction between him and them, between here and there, between everything that was so wretchedly wrong and this small bit of something that was always so right. Keith sinks to his knees, then all but falls back as Shiro’s weight collapses with him. His back hits the wall with a solid _thud_ as he curls himself around Shiro, his head bowing low. Through the fringe of his hair, he watches as Sendak moves out of sight, followed by the rest of the soldiers. 

It’s only after another minute passes, as silence settles heavy and worn around him, that he finally turns his attention back to Shiro. He’s still breathing, shallow little breaths that wash out warm against his neck, but his eyes remain steadfast in their closure. A bruise has blossomed over his left cheek, a dark purple-black attesting to its recent rise, and his lower lip sports a small laceration, healing and far less new. Keith exhales and shuts his eyes as he wraps tighter still around Shiro.

“I’m here,” he whispers. Soft and broken and utterly relieved. 

Two days he has been here without a word on Shiro. Two days left walking an endless track through his cell. Two days bartering with hope, and on the third, his needs answered. 

Something puts a shudder into Shiro’s breath then. Head snapping back, Keith scans the body in his arms, gaze flicking from face to chest to foot to hands and back again, searching for some possible reason behind that terrifying stutter-stop of a sound. 

Anything to suppress the fear rising ugly and brutal from the dark of his mind. 

“Shiro. . .wake up. . .” he murmurs, voice cracking. “You have to. . .come back. . .”

Fingers brush the hair from Shiro’s forehead. Beneath eyelids, Keith can see rapid little movements. Seconds later, Shiro’s brow is furrowing, his lips parting, and he’s looking every bit the picture of a man being mauled by nightmares. Fingers start to flutter restlessly against Keith’s thigh. It takes no thought for Keith to grab Shiro’s hand, to still the motions as he intertwines their fingers, and quietly, quietly begins to speak of all the things that make them whole.

In his arms, beneath the press of his words, Shiro begins to settle. A regulated breath, his features smoothing out as the horrors seem to drain from his dreams. Keith gives himself over to the silence that ensues, letting it sink as heavy and warm as Shiro’s comforter does. The warmest spot he has ever found, whether in the cold and dark of space or the blindingly bright glory of Earth’s dawns. 

He doesn’t know how long he had been asleep, only that something odd slinks along the periphery of his consciousness now, making sleep an uncomfortable place to be. A touch bursts electric along his collarbone, jumping in short little pulses up along his throat, traveling the line of his jugular. As if learning the signature of his heartbeat and all the ways it defines him. 

“Shiro. . .” comes as a whisper, leaving lips parted. 

Darkness closes over him as he opens his eyes. Keith takes note of the way Shiro is straddling him, with a hand gliding along the line of his neck, fingertips light as morning mist. The corner of Shiro’s mouth harbors a smirk, just a little skewed in the way it sits. It’s _off_ in the same way that smoke rising from a home is, driving right into the soul that sinking realization that something of yourself has been lost. 

When Keith’s gaze rises and locks with Shiro’s, it isn’t Shiro that he sees. 

They stay like that for a minute. . .or maybe more because Keith finds himself numb to time and maybe it’s a minute, or maybe it’s forever, but there is nothing of the man he called Shiro in the person who is gazing down at him like he is something new and fresh and perfect for devouring. There is darkness, and there is violence, both burning frighteningly bright in Shiro’s eyes, and never has Keith felt so insignificant. 

Palm presses against his throat. Fingers slowly curl around skin and muscle, all the vital workings of his life, with dedicated precision. It’s a second too late before Keith reacts, a hand flying to Shiro’s right arm and hammering a fist down over his wrist to no avail. Another hit, and this time Shiro settles all his weight over Keith’s thighs. The air begins to burn in Keith’s lungs. Shiro loosens his fingertips just enough for him to draw in a desperate breath, then ruthlessly clamps back down around his airway.

From the corner of his eye, Keith can see Sendak steeped in shadow, his image flickering like a faulty projector over the screen as his vision blurs. Seconds later, the world rings black as the back of his head is slammed against the wall. The fingers around his throat relinquish their hold once more, just enough for the air to slide down his throat and fill his starving lungs, before they're closing in hard and fast all over again. From the back of his skull, pain starts to sing a lullaby, broken and grating. 

Shiro comes back into focus once more. Keith has both hands wrapped around Shiro’s forearm, pulling and weakening every second with the effort. 

“Did I not say that arm was the strongest part of you?”

“Sen – “ but Keith can’t find the rest of Sendak’s name anywhere on his tongue. Only Shiro’s too-bright gaze before him, thrilled in all the ways Keith has never known Shiro to be. He wants to name this madness. He wants to scream, to call Shiro back to all that he has ever been, but there is nothing in his mind but the quiet coursing _thump_ of pain, the words crushed into silence. 

“Tell Haggar the experiment was a success.” 

Darkness closes in on Keith once more. And he’s reminded, in one small flash of a moment, of how monstrously black the sky had turned one day, forever ago, as he stood on the porch of the cabin. Of how the rain ripped through the clouds, cold and foreign against the land.

“And get him out of there before he kills him. We’re not done with either of them yet.”

Of how softly Shiro had spoken then, about how the air never smelled quite so clean as it did after a summer storm.


End file.
